Thursday, June 24, 2010

Strolling the East End of the Island

At the behest of more than one friend, I drove out to the town of Kailua on the East end of Oahu in search of a restaurant called "Buzz's Steakhouse." It wasn't too difficult to find, but I'll admit that I was none too impressed with the exterior of the place. It turns out that I'd arrived fully half an hour before they opened for dinner, so I was invited to sit at the bar and drink my way though the wait.

When I finally got around to the dinner portion of the evening, Buzz did not disappoint:

I was given a respectable table too:

Having finished dinner (and the rummiest mai tais I've ever had), I found myself a bit too inebriated to comfortably drive back to the hotel. Fortunately, there was a nice, empty beach right across the street:

At first I figured it was merely the weather that had kept everyone else from crowding out there with me. Then I spotted the first of several of these signs:

I'm not sure exactly what the area was contaminated with, but close scrutiny found no shortage of little bits of plastic scattered all over below the high water mark:

Even if it meant I was likely to find an early grave from heavy metal poisoning or asbestos exposure, I was glad to have the place mostly to myself:

As I ambled along, I did end up crossing paths with a very few other people. There was also a kite surfing class that was packing in their gear as I walked by. So mostly, this was my view:

Here's me enjoying solitude and quiet reflection:

Among other things, I contemplated the scattered remnants of sand castles left behind by earlier visitors to the same beach. While I pondered I noticed that while many amateur sculptors had made sand castles, nobody had bothered to provide their sandy royalty with sand thrones. So I made one: